


Two Things and the Space Between Them

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Hero Worship, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Post-Time Skip, Pre-Time Skip, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: If Lorenz’s reaction to being touched unexpectedly was to fumble a spell and spend hours afterwards agonizing over it, all because he was being touched so infrequently that it became something of consequence, he was a liability. Byleth couldn’t have that.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Two Things and the Space Between Them

**Author's Note:**

> _This is how  
>  you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space  
> between them.... Who do you want to be?... You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one  
> safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet.  
> You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You’re  
> still right here._— "You Are Jeff", Richard Siken

Byleth worried about all the deer when they went into battle, to an extent, but there were definitely some they worried about more than others. Ignatz, for example. Marianne, definitely. Raphael had given them no end of headaches towards the beginning but was improving now he’d learned that his incredible strength didn’t excuse him from learning how to dodge and block attacks. Lysithea was very dangerous on the battlefield but she was also young and constantly in poor health and she needed an eye kept on her just in case.

But typically the others could handle themselves. Claude was tactical and clever, Hilda had a healthy respect for the enemy and wore her armor with ease, Leonie was quick on her feet and even quicker now she was on a horse, and Lorenz, for all his bravado, worked remarkably well with others. Those four could take care of themselves well enough to leave the rest to Byleth.

Or at least, most of the time.

The deer were clearing some bandits out of a small town just south of Garreg Mach. It was a perfectly routine mission, an average Saturday for them. Byleth was with Ignatz, providing a shield while he shot arrows at the enemy, when they heard a shout.

They whipped their head around in time to see Hilda raising her axe as one of the bandits advanced on Lorenz, who had his hands up and was trying and failing to cast a fireball as he stumbled back. The villain ducked out of the way of Hilda’s weapon and raised his sword, and Byleth was braced to fling themselves through the low rushes along the river and shoot a spell of their own to defend Lorenz. They heard Ignatz fire off another arrow behind them and Raphael give a small cheer of approval as it struck down its mark. Lorenz righted himself and the burst of light that blew up in the face of his attacker was far too close for Byleth’s comfort, but the man crumpled to the ground and Lorenz moved on next to Hilda.

The rest of the battle passed without incident. Nobody was hurt, apart from a few scrapes and bruises. Lysithea spent the entire trip back to the monastery bragging about how cleanly she’d executed a new spell. Byleth did not miss the irritable looks Lorenz was giving her, nor the way Hilda was pointedly avoiding falling in beside him. Byleth tried to remember whether they had any bergamot tea in their office as they made mental plans to call Lorenz in to talk. 

Lorenz was uncharacteristically discomposed as Byleth poured him tea and offered him a tray of sweets, which he declined. He held the delicate cup and saucer close to his chest, head bowed minutely, and Byleth took note of it. They sipped their own tea and waited for Lorenz to speak first. 

“I must say, this invitation was… not unexpected,” he began after several moments. Byleth cocked their head. “After my abysmal performance during our latest mission I rather thought it was only a matter of time.” His mouth twisted into a brief grimace before he ducked behind his cup again.

“You don’t seem like yourself,” Byleth observed, and Lorenz looked up so suddenly he almost dropped his tea into his lap.

“Professor, I assure you I am fine. Saturday was an unfortunate blunder, but that is all it was. It will not happen again.” 

“I didn’t mean just the battle,” Byleth added with a frown. “You don’t need to be so jumpy.”

Lorenz sighed minutely and set his cup and saucer down. “You’re right, of course. I apologize.” He ran a hand through his hair, still not looking at them. “I am just so horribly embarrassed. I put myself and Hilda in danger through my negligence and she seems intent on holding it against me.” 

“It wasn’t negligence,” Byleth said gently, trying to meet Lorenz’s eye, but he was pointedly avoiding them, instead gazing over their shoulder at some point on the horizon. “Everyone makes mistakes, even you.” 

Lorenz’s pale cheeks colored at this and Byleth tried not to smirk. It was a fetching look on him, blushing, but it would be neither appropriate nor helpful to tell him so. “We can’t afford that, can we?” he said after a moment, and Byleth blinked, trying to latch back onto the flow of the conversation. “Mistakes in battle cost lives.” 

Ah. Byleth crossed their arms on the table and leaned in. “Then tell me what you think you did wrong, and we’ll correct it.” 

Bafflingly, Lorenz blushed even deeper. His fingers twitched on the table and Byleth, following an impulse before they could control it, put their hand over his. He yanked it back as though he had been burned and Byleth straightened up in their seat again, feeling oddly guilty. 

“I do not believe this is a helpful line of conversation,” he said in a tight, pointed voice, and Byleth sighed. 

“I believe it is. Tell me what you think you could have done better, if you’re so sure it wasn’t just an unavoidable accident.” 

“Hilda distracted me,” Lorenz said, and it was such an unexpected announcement that Byleth raised their eyebrows. “Or rather, I got distracted by Hilda, however you would best put it.”

“How so?”

Lorenz was crimson under his bangs, and Byleth braced for whatever was coming. “She— I— that is, we happened to… to brush past each other, and I—“ 

For the second time in five minutes Byleth bit back a grin; they might have suspected something like this. Lorenz, who was so forward in his approach to women and so self-aggrandizing about his status, was really quite shy when it came right down to it. Hilda had probably touched him in passing to remind him to hang back while she made a direct attack, and Lorenz had flustered and fumbled his shot. But he was right, none of them couldn’t afford to make mistakes in battle, and Lorenz would have to get over this sooner or later lest it lead to someone getting truly hurt. They sent Lorenz off again with an assurance that he would not beat himself up about the series of events any more than he already had. Byleth poured themself more tea and considered.

During lessons that week while Byleth was helping Hilda with a lengthy tome on leadership, they tried to get her side of the incident. 

“Oh, Saturday?” Hilda asked, looking up in surprise from where she was scribbling notes. “I told Lorenz to stay behind me and shoot once I distracted that guy. I didn’t expect him to just give up and let me do all the work.”

“From where I was standing it looked more like he tried and failed to cast a spell in time to assist you,” Byleth said as they turned the pages of the dusty book, searching for a passage they wanted Hilda to commit to memory. “You did an admirable job of protecting him in a moment of weakness.” 

“You think?” Hilda smiled minutely. “Huh. I guess I never thought of it like that.” She was quiet for a moment and then said, “I should probably apologize for being short with him about it, right?” 

“It couldn’t hurt,” Byleth said. 

“He’s pretty sensitive deep down,” Hilda mused, going back to her notes. “It’s smart of you to look out for him the way you do, professor.” 

Byleth shrugged off her words. They’d do the same for any of their students. 

Nevertheless Byleth found themself keeping a closer eye on Lorenz than they had previously done. What they observed both confirmed their suspicions and, despite all that they tried to reassure themself to the contrary, troubled them. Lorenz held himself apart from everyone else, based on status, yes, but also physically. Nobody touched him. Nobody patted him on the back, grabbed his hand to pull him along in the corridor, nudged him in camaraderie during meals. Byleth tried to imagine Lorenz’s reaction to being hugged and found they couldn’t, simply because apart from the way he had reacted when they’d patted his hand during tea they could not recall ever seeing anybody touch him at all. It made them ache with strange kind of loneliness themself.

And that simply wouldn’t do. If Lorenz’s reaction to being touched unexpectedly was to fumble a spell and spend hours afterwards agonizing over it, all because he was being touched so infrequently that it became something of consequence, he was a liability. Byleth couldn’t have that. They spent several more days wondering what they could possibly do to fix the problem before a solution came to them, surprisingly enough, thanks to Raphael 

Byleth was fishing at the pond, one elbow resting on a raised knee and their face propped in their hand. Nothing was biting, although Byleth’s heart wasn’t in it and maybe the fish could tell. They were jerked from their contemplation of the water by Raphael sitting down next to them and swinging his legs down over the dock. 

“What’s up, professor? You look kind of glum,” Raphale said in his usual loud, jovial voice. Byleth turned their head to smile fondly at the big man. 

“Do I?” 

“Maybe just a little,” Raphael said apologetically, then smiled again. “If there’s anything I can do, promise you’ll let me know.” 

Byleth nodded. “I appreciate the offer. I’ll think on it,” they said, and Raphael clapped a hand on their shoulder. The motion would have toppled Byleth over into the water if they’d been standing. 

“Great. I’m headed to the dining hall, you want to come? I think they’re serving pasties tonight.” 

Byleth took the hand Raphael extended to help them to their feet, thinking. “Actually,” Byleth said as they got up, “there is something you can do to help.” 

“Of course!” 

“Go see if Lorenz wants to have dinner with you.” 

Raphael’s brow wrinkled. “Sure, professor, but I don’t think Lorenz likes eating with me. He gets all fussy about table manners and stuff.” 

Byleth nodded their understanding. “It’s okay if he turns you down, I just think he could use some cheering up. He’s been out of sorts and you’re good at making people feel better.” 

“Really?” Raphael’s whole face lit up. “Of course I’ll cheer him up. We need everyone in top form for the next mission, you know?” 

“Exactly,” Byleth agreed, and they watched Raphael head towards the stairs to the 2nd floor dormitory feeling considerably more at ease about the whole thing. 

The next time Byleth spoke with Leonie, Lorenz happened to come up, and Byleth asked her to spar with him the next time she thought about going for lance practice. Leonie was the better of the pair, and Byleth had long since observed that Leonie tended to be very hands-on in teaching others. 

Byleth paired Claude and Lorenz up for wyvern duty and counted on Lorenz’ inexperience and Claude’s expertise to accomplish their goal. They told Lysithea when she came asking that Lorenz was probably a good recipient for the tea cakes she’d been learning to bake and now wanted to share with somebody. And so on, and so on, for several weeks. It wasn’t long before Byleth had a mental schedule of who’s turn it was to work on breaking Lorenz out of his shell. 

It also wasn’t long before somebody caught on to what they were doing. 

Byleth was having an early breakfast of kippers and eggs one morning, long before classes typically started and therefore before most of the student body could be bothered to rise, when Claude settled himself on the bench opposite with a plate of fruit and sausages. “G’morning, teach.” 

“Good morning, Claude. You’re up early,” Byleth observed as they took a bite of fish.

“Yeah, I wanted to catch you alone,” Claude said with a wink. 

Byleth raised their eyebrows. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“What’s going on with Lorenz?” Claude asked, and Byleth nearly choked on their breakfast.

“What do you mean?” They asked as they patted down the front of their shirt with a napkin. 

“Come on, now, we’re all adults,” Claude said. “You’re obviously worried about him for some reason or you wouldn’t be trying to subtly ensure he’s never alone. Spill.” 

Byleth considered him for a moment, but then, there was no real reason not to answer his question. Byleth told him.

For several seconds Claude stared, then he threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, boy,” he said as he finally settled back down. “Teach, I hate to be the one to break this to you but it sounds to me like you have a crush.” 

Byleth glanced around the room and breathed a sigh of relief that the dining hall was still empty apart from the cook, who had looked over at them at the sound of Claude’s laughter but was now turning back to the pot she was stirring behind the counter. “That is ridiculous,” Byleth said quietly, and Claude quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. “I am your professor, first of all—” 

“And young and good-looking enough that half the academy assumed you were a new student when you first came here,” Claude cut them off. Byleth glared. 

“It’s not a question of age, it’s a question of status,” Byleth said, and Claude grinned. 

“You sound just like him, always worried about status.” 

“I am responsible for the well-being of all of you, Lorenz included,” Byleth snapped. “There’s nothing more to it than that.”

Claude waved a hand in defeat. “Fine, fine. I’m just saying that maybe you might want to think about what your motivations really were for starting this little Lorenz hug program you seem to be coordinating, because I’m not sure ‘safety on the battlefield’ was really it.” And with that Claude got up from the bench and carried his empty plate to the return, leaving Byleth to their breakfast and their thoughts. 

Byleth assumed it would take several days or weeks for the conversation with Claude to fade from their mind, but the next week brought news of a plague or some kind of curse in Remire Village, and between that, an odd premonitive worry about Jeralt, and some kind of illness Byleth seemed unable to shake, it was soon forgotten entirely, lost to the confusion of the next months. In fact, the next time Byleth thought of it was on the other side of a tumble down a canyon after the battle of Garreg Mach, five years on, when the world as they knew it had changed overnight. 

After they’d returned to the monastery, after Claude had brought them up to speed, after the others had come back… only after all of that did Byleth have the chance to grieve the five years they’d lost. And in that grieving they found themself returning, to their bewilderment, to Lorenz’s aversion to touch and to Claude’s words about it. _What your motivations really were._

Byleth kicked at a bit of rubble halfheartedly and watched it fall down, down into the chasm that surrounded the cathedral. It clattered as it went, and they bent down to reach for another bit to throw. At the light click of boots on stone, however, they straightened up again and raised their arm in the direction of the sound, waiting for whoever was approaching to show themself before deciding if they wanted to hit them with a rock. 

It was Lorenz. 

Byleth dropped their arm to their side, and Lorenz stepped into view with his hands raised slightly. “Were you intending to throw a rock at me?” he asked, the barest hint of a smile in his voice. “You, who could kill me a hundred different ways with a hundred different weapons?” 

Byleth huffed out a laugh and sat down on the ledge, swinging their legs out over the space beneath and staring out across the expanse where the bridge connecting the cathedral with the rest of the monastery had somehow survived the assault five years prior. “What do you want, Lorenz?” They threw the rock out over the distance for good measure. It fell out of sight towards the river, which brought Byleth some small satisfaction. 

To their very great surprise, Lorenz sat down beside them and let his own legs dangle. Byleth waited for him to answer them, leaning their weight on one open palm and watching as Lorenz looked into the distance, his eyes narrowing. After several long moments, he said, “I wanted to see you, nothing more.” 

“Ah,” Byleth said. They looked back out over the chasm. “Well, here I am.” 

“Yes,” Lorenz’s lips curved into a small smile. “Here you are.” 

There was silence for a while longer. Byleth had a thousand things they wanted to ask but had no idea where to start. Five years stretched between them, five years in which Byleth had been asleep and Lorenz had been… what had Lorenz been doing all the years of the war? What had made him so sure they would come back? Why was he here now, looking at them like he had his own questions but couldn’t voice them? 

“Professor,” he started, his voice conflicted, and Byleth turned to look at him in time to see him open his mouth and close it again, a frustrated expression on his face. His eyes were fixated somewhere over their left ear. “May I?” he asked, raising a hand to their face, and Byleth blinked and jerked back, watching the way Lorenz withdrew his hand, looking disappointed. They nodded. 

Lorenz ran his fingers through their hair, tucking it behind their ear. Byleth’s stomach lurched as they leaned into the touch, felt their eyelids flutter against their cheeks for just a moment before Lorenz took his hand back and dropped a dead leaf off the edge. Byleth watched it fall for a moment, letting out a shaky breath. 

“I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I saw you and Claude battling those fools looting the monastery,” Lorenz murmured. 

Byleth glanced sideways at him, raising an eyebrow. “Take a bit of leaf out of my hair?” 

“Touch you,” Lorenz said, his voice long-suffering and oddly fond. “I knew you would come back, I always _knew_ , but I wanted… I wanted to be sure.” 

“How did you know?” Byleth asked, and they realized they were leaning into Lorenz, folding themself into his space, and he was leaning in too, as easy as breathing.

“You came back from the dead for us once, during that business with Kronya and Solon,” Lorenz said, his voice so soft, _so soft_ and almost against their lips. “If death couldn’t stop you then, why should it now?” 

Byleth’s breath caught, their throat tight. “Of course I did,” they forced out, their voice sounding strange to their own ears. “I wasn’t going to leave you all to be killed.” Lorenz was looking at them with a reverence that made Byleth feel simultaneously very big and very small; a goddess, but impossible to reach. 

They closed the distance like someone grasping at water slipping through their hands, and Lorenz made a surprised sound that turned into a gasp of pleasure. Byleth was clutching at him, pulling him closer, and for a moment they flashed back on Lorenz pulling his hand away over tea and Byleth’s unaccountable feeling of guilt, but Lorenz was kissing them back, his hands tangling in their hair and the front of their shirt. 

“This is,” Lorenz said, his voice wavering as Byleth kissed his jaw, the space below his ear, “I wasn’t expecting—“ 

“It’s just me,” Byleth’s voice sounded pleading to their own ears. “I used to tease you about your flirting, remember?” They twined their fingers in his hair, so much longer than it had been and smooth as silk in their grasp. “I sent you roses for your birthday even though we’d barely met a month ago, and you got flustered because I’d already taken note they were your favorite.” 

“I know who you are, professor,” Lorenz said around a breathy sigh as Byleth worked the top buttons of his shirt open, exposing his pale neck. “I’m just not sure you do.” 

“I know who I am,” Byleth dismissed his words but felt a rush of panic lance through them at the implication.

Lorenz’s hand tightened on their arm. “You cannot know what you are to me, how many times I’ve imagined—“ he tugged them away from his neck and looked them over, his eyes searching their face. Byleth felt something cold sink into their stomach.

Byleth yanked themself out of his grip and stood up, watching the pain flicker over his face before he closed himself off, retreated from them, drawing his hands back over his chest. “I don’t want to be on a pedestal,” Byleth said, and Lorenz blinked at her, confusion clouding his features. 

“Then I shall rise to meet you,” he said, standing and taking their hand again. “You need only tell me you desire it, and I—“

“No,” Byleth cut him off, and Lorenz looked like they’d slapped him. “No, I want you to… to let me climb down.” 

Lorenz’s expression softened. Byleth recalled with sudden clarity the way he had kept asking after their health in the month leading up to the battle in Remire Village. He touched their cheek again, fingers barely brushing skin, and Byleth wanted to take his hand and press a kiss into his palm, take him in their arms and luxuriate in the closeness of him. “Of course,” he said. 

Byleth nodded once, longing to press another kiss to Lorenz’s lips but knowing it would be unwise. “You’d better get back to the others before all the good spots by the fire are taken,” they joked, and Lorenz chuckled. 

“And you? Are you planning to sleep in the ruins of the cathedral?” 

“Something like that.” Byleth had been asleep for a very long time and in truth they suspected that they would not need to rest at all in the days moving forward, but they had no desire for any of the others to find out if that was the case.

“I worry that if I turn my back on you, you may disappear again,” Lorenz confessed. 

“I’d come back,” Byleth said with a smile. 

“Yes, I believe you would,” Lorenz’s answering smile was warm and trusting, and it made Byleth feel strangely transparent. “Good night, professor.” 

Byleth went into the cathedral and sat under the open ceiling as the sun set, watching the stars rise, planning. 


End file.
